I briefly mentioned a Christmas decorating job I did last year in a previous post. I'm finally getting around to sharing the pictures I promised. Unfortunately, the pictures just don't do this job/home justice. I always think it's hard to photograph Christmas trees - they never look as good in a picture as they do in real life. I just want to throw that out there before we get started.
I was asked to decorate the entire house - it was so much work, but so much fun! The clients already had two trees, but after a major renovation and addition, they needed 3 more. I got to design, shop and produce all of the new trees as well as the existing ones. I did add a few more little details to the two existing, but the main job was designing the new trees. Along with the five trees, we bought and hung about 30 wreaths, decorated two stairways, hung a hundred feet of ornament garland and decorated the rest of the house with little things here and there. It took 5 of us two and half days to put it all up. (Just a side note, there were also about 5-6 guys outside putting up all the decorations out there. So spectacular! The storage for all this stuff would BLOW your mind.)
The main tree was one of the existing ones. You can see it as you walk in the front door. A very traditional tree for a very traditional living room. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the music room tree. It is hidden from sight in this first photo, but it was placed right behind that wall next to the piano hence the name "music room tree". Originally, it had more traditional ornaments, but I found a bunch of music related ornaments at Target to put on as well.
For the sunroom, we did a nature inspired tree. Perfect since the sunroom is surrounded with windows and has an indoor/outdoor feel. And since this was the nature tree, more specifically a bird tree, we thought it appropriate that it be a real tree. It smelled divine in that room! The decor included birds, bird houses, nests, berries, and a brown/light blue color scheme for the ornaments and ribbon.
Next up, is the family room tree. This was by far the largest tree. The genesis of the design came from the colors of the room. Several pieces in the room have a very soft tealish-blue color in them. To bring that out, we picked up on that color. Once we were out shopping, we saw that color paired with the green a LOT so we ran with it!
The mantel has a huge presence in this room and it had to have equally scaled accessories and decorations. While out shopping at my favorite store Target, I just happened to find over sized ornaments serendipitously in our color scheme. Yay! And matching stockings to boot! It is definitely a more modern look, but once my clients' kids got a peek at them, they begged to keep them. The garland was from Pottery Barn and came with the gold and green ornaments already attached. To make it match perfectly with our room and overall scheme, we added the blue ornaments.
Once the mantel was in order, we started selecting decor for the large tree. Knowing our color scheme, we set out to find some fun and unique decorations. I saw an ornament with peacock feathers on it and that was it!!! Those feathers have the blue and green iridescent colors too! So I bought several peacock inspired ornaments and decorations. I also bought huge (12-14" diameter) flowers in various colors to take up space on such a large tree. Lots of details for you to discover, but one I want to point out is the tree skirt. With such an unusual color scheme for a Christmas tree, it was a bit of a challenge to find the perfect skirt. I bought several and took them on site to try them out. Some didn't make the cut at all, but others had potential. The large gold one was okay, but just kind of boring. The bright teal one was too small for the size of the tree, but put those two together and we had the answer!
Now to my favorite tree of this whole job - all six feet of him! It doesn't have to be a huge tree to be fantastic. My clients have a 1950's themed diner room in their house. Black and white checkered floor, red vinyl booths and vintage Formica tables. It's so fun! So, I told them that we needed to do a 50's themed tree in there! They agreed. I thought decoration in that room was important especially since that was where the bar was going to be set up during their huge Christmas party (300+ guests).
This tree was very economical too. The tree itself was from Wal-Mart. The black tree's are SO in right now. They were flying off the shelves and I barely got all the ones bought that I needed. I even bought one for myself. So many people think it sounds too morbid for Christmas time, but I think they look absolutely beautiful with white lights and gold accents. But anyway, back to the 50's tree. I found old school bubble lights, Elvis ornaments, disco balls and Coca-cola ornaments all pretty reasonably priced. I also found old little records at my local Goodwill store for 50 cents each!!! Just perfect! But my absolute favorite element of this tree was the tree skirt. Now, I always try to give credit where credit is due and my hubby gets all the credit on this idea. 50's themed tree skirt = poodle skirt!!! Isn't that ingenious!? So I made a red poodle skirt to match the color scheme and it ended up being the hit of the tree. Since a poodle skirt is always full and fluffy, I added waded up newspaper balls underneath. And I've always been a sucker for ball fringe. If you ever want me to buy something, just put ball fringe on it and I'll get my wallet out! Doesn't it look so cute here!? And ball fringe is so 1950's, too! I still get tickled when I think about this tree.
And lastly, this was just too pretty not to share. This was not in my scope, but one of my client's family members decorates their outdoor pots for them for the season. She just goes to a florist shop and gets greenery and makes the magic herself. Didn't she do a great job!? Wish she could come to my house and do my pots!
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